McAuliffe Considers 2020 White House Bid As Dems Worry "There"s Too Much Clinton In Him"

Virginia governor, and long-time Clinton confidant, Terry McAuliffe is apparently "seriously" considering a bid for the White House in 2020. Per The Hill:

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) is “seriously” considering the 2020 presidential race, according to confidants.

 

“He’s given me every indication that he’s taking it seriously,” said one McAuliffe friend who has spoken to him about his 2020 prospects. “I don’t think he’s 100 percent decided that this is something he’s planning to do but it is something he’s seriously considering.”

 

“Whether he pulls the trigger or not, that remains to be seen,” the friend added.

 

McAuliffe could successfully talk about his track record as governor of Virginia, a purple state, former aides and associates say.

Of course, our readers will undoubtedly recall that McAuliffe is the same Clinton confidant who funneled roughly $700,000 in political contributions to the Senate campaign of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe"s wife at the same time that McCabe was conveniently overseeing an investigation of Hillary Clinton. 

Not surprisingly, it"s precisely that little nuance about his background that has Democratic strategists worried that he has "too much Clinton in him" to be a successful 2020 candidate.

But should he decide to run, the governor would face some obstacles.

 

For starters — his close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

 

On the heels of a disappointing loss in 2016, political observers say Democrats might want someone from outside of  Clinton World in 2020.

 

And McAuliffe, who served as co-chairman of Bill Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign and chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign, would be labeled by rivals as a major part of the Clinton inner circle.

 

“I think that’s his biggest problem,” the friend said. “It will be so hard for him to thread the needle. Bill Clinton is his best friend and anyone who knows Terry knows he is a very, very loyal person. He would walk over coals for Bill Clinton, so I don’t think it’s a politically tenable position.”

 

Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, agreed that his Clinton ties are problematic.

 

“I don’t think he is the way to go for the Democrats,” Zelizer said. “There is too much Clinton in him, and he doesn’t have the kind of fire power on the campaign trail people will need to really rally the base.”

Meanwhile, even if he does decide to run, the bookies don"t seem to think he has a chance.  According to PaddyPower, California Senator Kamala Harris is the front-runner for Dems with Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden not far behind and Terry McAuliffe an extreme long shot at 80/1.

Shockingly, Kanye West didn"t even make the list...

The New American Dream: Work Longer, Live Sicker, Die Sooner

With stagnant wages, rising cost of living (see shelter inflation), and a lack of savings, Americans are retiring later than ever before (if at all). But in a double-whammy for seniors, whose health is declining, their lifespans are shrinking offering them little if any time to enjoy the end of the American Dream walking hand in hand into the sunset on a faraway beach...

As Bloomberg reports, data released last week suggest Americans’ health is declining and millions of middle-age workers face the prospect of shorter, and less active, retirements than their parents enjoyed.

Here are the stats:

The U.S. age-adjusted mortality rate - a measure of the number of deaths per year - rose 1.2 percent from 2014 to 2015, according to the Society of Actuaries.

That’s the first year-over-year increase since 2005, and only the second rise greater than 1 percent since 1980.

At the same time that Americans’ life expectancy is stalling, public policy and career tracks mean millions of U.S. workers are waiting longer to call it quits.

Almost one in three Americans age 65 to 69 is still working, along with almost one in five in their early 70s.

And finally, Americans in their late 50s already have more serious health problems than people at the same ages did 10 to 15 years ago, according to the journal Health Affairs.

Bloomberg"s Ben Steverman points out that researchers have offered many theories for why Americans’ health is getting worse. Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, a Nobel Prize winner, have argued that an epidemic of suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol abuse have caused a spike in death rates among middle-age whites.

Higher rates of obesity may also be taking their toll. And Americans may have already seen most of the benefits from previous positive developments that cut the death rate, such as a decline in smoking and medical advances like statins that fight cardiovascular disease.

So there you have it - The New American Dream: Work Longer, Live Sicker, Die Sooner...

Princeton Economist: Nearly Half Of Working Age Men Not In The Labor Force Take Opioids Daily

Esteemed Princeton professor and former Obama White House economist Alan Krueger is back with yet another prediction about why Americans, particularly men between the ages of 25-54, suddenly no longer have any interest in working.  In his report, entitled "Where Have All The Workers Gone? An Inquiry Into The Decline Of The U.S. Labor Force Participation Rate," Krueger ponders the data below which reveal that the labor force participation rate among men, aged 25-54, started dropping around 1965 and has been steadily declining ever since.

Of course, it couldn"t possibly have anything to do with stagnant real wages or soaring entitlements that have provided massive, and increasing, disincentives to work over the past several decades. 

No, after spending months, or maybe even years, running very complicated regressions that your simple mind could never possibly understand, Krueger would like for you to know that it"s the growing opioid epidemic that is forcing men to sit on their couches all day rather than look for work.  Here"s a summary of his findings from the Brookings Institute:

The increase in opioid prescriptions from 1999 to 2015 could account for about 20 percent of the observed decline in men’s labor force participation (LFP) during that same period.

In “Where have all the workers gone? An inquiry into the decline of the U.S. labor force participation rate” (PDF), Princeton University’s Alan Krueger examines the labor force implications of the opioid epidemic on a local and national level.

Among other findings, the research suggests that:

• Regional variation in opioid prescription rates across the U.S. is due in large part to differences in medical practices, rather than varying health conditions. Pain medication is more widely used in counties where health care professionals prescribe greater quantities of opioid medication, with a 10 percent increase in opioid prescriptions per capita is associated with a 2 percent increase in the share of individuals who report taking a pain medication on any given day. When accounting for individuals’ disability status, self-reported health, and demographic characteristics, the effect is cut roughly in half, but remains statistically significant.

• Over the last 15 years, LFP fell more in counties where more opioids were prescribed. Krueger reaches this conclusion by linking 2015 county-level opioid prescription rates to individual level labor force data in 1999-2001 and 2014-16. For more on the relationship between prescription rates and labor force participation rate on the county-level.

Krueger also provided this very helpful map proving that opioid abuse is highly correlated to unemployment.  Of course, it couldn"t possibly be the case that opioid abuse is the result of high unemployment and the associated depression that goes along with it...no, the opioid abuse definitely came first.

So, what is Krueger"s solution to help reverse the seemingly perpetual decline in labor force participation rates?  If you guessed "Obamacare" then you"re absolutely right...and unfortunately, no, that is not a joke...here is the excerpt from page 38 of Krueger"s paper:

Third, addressing the decades-long slide in labor force participation by prime age men should be a national priority. This group expresses low levels of SWB and reports finding relatively little meaning in their daily activities. Because nearly half of this group reported being in poor health, it may be possible for expanded health insurance coverage and preventative care under the Affordable Care Act to positively affect the health of prime age men going forward.

And while we would never presume to be smart enough to question the very thorough, impartial research of a Princeton economist, we do wonder whether it"s in any way relevant that labor force participation rates seemingly started to decline in 1965...

...at exactly the same time that welfare spending started to surge?

It"s probably just a coincidence.

Krueger"s full report can be reviewed here:

Why Middle Class Whites Are Dying Faster (In 6 Painful Charts)

In 2015, a blockbuster study came to a surprising conclusion: Middle-aged white Americans are dying younger for the first time in decades, despite positive life expectancy trends in other wealthy countries and other segments of the US population.

The research, by Princeton University’s Anne Case and Angus Deaton, highlighted the links between economic struggles, suicides, and alcohol and drug overdoses.

Since then, Case and Deaton have been working to more fully explain their findings.

They’ve now come to a compelling conclusion: It’s complicated. There’s no single reason for this disturbing increase in the mortality rate, but a toxic cocktail of factors.

In a new 60-page paper, “Mortality and morbidity in the 21st Century,” out in draft form in the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity Thursday, the researchers weave a narrative of “cumulative disadvantage” over a lifetime for white people ages 45 through 54, particularly those with low levels of education.

Along with worsening job prospects over the past several decades, this group has seen their chances of a stable marriage and family decline, along with their overall health. To manage their despair about the gap between their hopes and what’s come of their lives, they’ve often turned to drugs, alcohol, and suicide.

Meanwhile, gains in fighting heart disease have stalled, and rates of obesity and diabetes have ploddingly climbed.

So the rise in mortality for white mid-life people in America since the late 1990s is actually the final stage of a decades-long process. “It’s about the collapse of white middle class,” said Case. Here are the five big takeaways from the researchers’ new opus.

1) Suicides, alcohol, and drug overdose deaths have gone up across the entire country. (Read: It’s not just a rural problem.)

 Brookings

“Deaths of despair” — or suicide, alcoholism, and drug overdoses, particularly from opioid painkillers — are a growing problem for midlife white people.

As you can see on the left-hand map, the epidemic started in the Southwest. Now it’s “country-wide,” the study authors write, and the increase can be “seen at every level of residential urbanization in the US.” So it’s not just a rural problem or an urban problem — it’s both.

The crisis is particularly acute among middle-aged whites. “The deaths of despair come from a long-standing process of cumulative disadvantage for those with less than a college degree,” Case and Deaton write. “The story is rooted in the labor market, but involves many aspects of life, including health in childhood, marriage, child rearing, and religion.”

 Brookings

In an interview, Deaton explained, “The cohort that entered the labor market in the ’70s on down, their jobs earnings and prospects are worse. That affected their marriage prospects. Marriages got screwed up. They had children out of wedlock. Their pain levels [are] going up.” All that contributes to the deaths of despair.

The study authors don’t see the opioid supply as the fundamental factor here, but “prescription of opioids for chronic pain added fuel to the flames, making the epidemic much worse than it otherwise would have been,” they wrote.

The impact of rising deaths of despair on overall mortality was masked until the late 1990s by the decline of heart disease deaths. But recently that has changed too.

2) Deaths from chronic diseases such as diabetes have been rising

County-level mortality from diabetes, urogenital, blood, and endocrine diseases between 1980 and 2014. You can see these trending up all over the country. JAMA

Progress against mortality from heart disease has slowed and stopped, and deaths from cancer, which had been on a steady decline, are also stagnating in this group.

Meanwhile, other chronic diseases have continued to rise in the whole population, particularly among middle-aged white people. Diabetes’ prevalence has exploded in the US over the past 20 years. Nearly 30 million Americans live with the disease today — more than three times the number in the early 1990s. And this may be a major, underappreciated driver of the mortality trend.

3) The least-educated Americans are suffering the most

 Brookings

The rise in mortality among middle-aged whites is largely being driven by those with a high school degree or less. The researchers find that the gap in mortality between more and less educated is increasing, while mortality is also rising for those without a college degree and falling for those with a college degree.

“It looks like there are two Americas,” Case said. “One for people who went to college and one that didn’t.”

The middle-aged whites with less than a bachelor’s degree saw “progress stop in mortality from heart disease and cancer, and saw increases in chronic lower respiratory disease and deaths from drugs, alcohol, and suicide,” the researchers write.

Why education is such an important health indicator is difficult to untangle, Case added. “But when you think about what happens when industries pull out of towns, the tax base implodes, schools [are] not well funded, and the death spiral continues.”

In the past, people with low levels of education could get a job in a factory and work their way up the chain of command. “You could graduate high school, work at Bethlehem Steel, get more money every year as you get more experienced,” Deaton said, “and turn yourself into one of the famed blue-collar aristocrats of the 1970s.” Now, he added, “There’s a feeling that life has gone, and remainders of that life are getting less and less for each generation.”

To be clear, the study authors don’t buy the idea that one’s income relative to what one expected is influencing mortality. Rather, “It’s the life you expected to have relative to your father or grandfather — it’s just not there anymore,” Deaton said.

4) Other nonwhite racial groups aren’t experiencing the same mortality uptick — so it’s not just about income

 Brookings

As you can see here, mortality for middle-aged black people converged with mortality for middle-aged white people with low levels of education in the late 2000s (though the white population overall is still doing better than African Americans). Meanwhile, mortality rates among Hispanics continued to fall.

These other racial groups aren’t necessarily doing any better economically than their white counterparts, which is part of the reason Case and Deaton don’t accept a simple income explanation for the death uptick.

“It is possible that it is not the last 20 years that matters, but rather that the long-run stagnation in wages and in incomes has bred a sense of hopelessness,” they write. “But ... even if we go back to the late 1960s, the ethnic and racial patterns of median family incomes are similar for whites, blacks, and Hispanics, and so can provide no basis for their sharply different mortality outcomes after 1998.”

Instead, the researchers think the fact that the overall life prospects for white middle-aged people without a BA have declined over time — they are doing worse than their parents on both a personal and professional level, and probably worse than they expected — is nudging mortality downward. This regression is different from the story of progress in the African American community, for example. Here’s Case and Deaton again:

The historian Carol Anderson argued in an interview in Politico (2016) that for whites “if you’ve always been privileged, equality begins to look like oppression,” and contrasts the pessimism among whites with the “sense of hopefulness, that sense of what America could be, that has been driving black folks for centuries.” That hopefulness is consistent with the much lower suicide rates among blacks, but beyond that, while suggestive, it is hard to confront such accounts with the data.

5) This story is unique to the US

 Brookings

The US, particularly middle-aged white Americans, is an outlier in the developed world when it comes to this mid-life mortality uptick.

“Mortality rates in comparable rich countries have continued their pre-millennial fall at the rates that used to characterize the US,” Case and Deaton write. “In contrast to the US, mortality rates in Europe are falling for those with low levels of educational attainment, and are doing so more rapidly than mortality rates for those with higher levels of education.”

If American wants to turn the trend around, then it has to become a little more like other countries with more generous safety nets and more accessible health care, the researchers said. Introducing a single-payer health system, for example, or value-added or goods and services taxes that support a stronger safety net would be top of their policy wish list. (America right now is, of course, moving in the opposite direction under Trump, and shredding the safety net.)

They also admit, though, that it’s taken decades to reverse the mortality progress in America, and it won’t be turned around quickly or easily. But there is one “no-brainer” change that could help, Case added. “The easy thing would be close the tap on prescription opioids for chronic pain.”

Unlike health care and increasing taxes, opioids are actually a public health issue with bipartisan support. Deaton, for his part, was hopeful. Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, he said, “All policy seems impossible until it suddenly becomes inevitable.”

Professors Pledge To "Use Regular Class Time" To Protest Trump

A national “teach-in” movement is asking professors to set aside class time between Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the presidential inauguration to “protest” oppression and challenge “Trumpism.”

As CampusReform"s Anthony Gockowski reports, so far, 17 American colleges and universities have signed on to participate in the campaign originating out of UCLA, including such prestigious institutions as Princeton and UC-Berkeley.

The movement, known as “Teach, Organize, Resist,” is set to kick-off on January 18, strategically “poised between Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the presidential inauguration” as an explicit means of “challenging Trumpism.”

“Transform your classrooms and commons into spaces of education that protest policies of violence, disenfranchisement, segregation, and isolationism,” the organizers urge educators on the movement’s homepage, clarifying elsewhere on the site that participation “is an opportunity to affirm the role of critical thinking and academic knowledge in challenging Trumpism.”

“On that day, we intend to teach about the agendas and policies of the new administration, be it the proposed dismantling of economic and environmental regulations or the threatened rollback of the hard-won rights that form the fragile scaffolding of American democracy,” a description for the teach-in explains, later accusing Trump of institutionalizing “white supremacy” and allegedly proposing the “expansion of state violence targeting people of color” and other marginalized groups.

“On that day, we intend to organize against the proposed expansion of state violence targeting people of color, undocumented people, queer communities, women, Muslims, and many others,” the description continues.

“On that day, we intend to resist the institutionalization of ideologies of separation and subordination, including white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia, and virulent nationalism.”

The movement, which has been spreading on social media under the hashtag “J18,” was started by “departments, centers, and collectives at UCLA,” but has since amassed the support of 18 other institutions, many of them public.

Professors at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for instance, are asking “all UCSB faculty to actively support” the teach-in, even suggesting that they “insert a note” about it in syllabi or “use your regular class time to attend a panel with your students.”

Those professors who elect not to require their students to attend the events, however, are still asked to “not penalize students for a missed class if they intend to attend panels.”

Scripps College, on the other hand, will be hosting a teach-in on “conservatism and right wing movements,” which will discuss Republican “strategies and tactics of mobilizing support, producing consent, and fragmenting opposition” in order to “help fellow students understand our present political moment.”

Other prestigious institutions, including Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley, are also among the 17 American institutions participating (two others are foreign, and another is the American Anthropological Association). All told, nine of the participating schools are public, and a total of 46 teach-ins are currently scheduled to take place.

“Let it be known that on #J18 and beyond, universities, colleges, and high schools refused to bear silent witness to the politics of hate and fear; that in these times, these places of teaching and learning not only served as a sanctuary for its students and workers but also stood up to proclaim the power of knowledge on the frontlines of social justice,” the organizers declare optimistically.

Princeton Cancels Men's Swim Season After "Vulgar, Offensive, Misogynistic And Racist" Emails Discovered

Princeton University has officially become the 3rd Ivy League School, joining Harvard and Columbia, to cancel a team"s sports season after the discovery of what university officials called "vulgar, offensive, misogynistic and racist” emails on a team listserv.  The Daily Princetonian reported that the men"s swimming and diving team had be suspended for the remainder of the season after the alleged "offensive" messages prompted an official complaint to be filed by an anonymous source. 

Princeton has refused to share the contents of the controversial emails citing "privacy concerns for those involved," but posted a statement saying that certain members of the team had "failed to respect the values of this University and the dignity of other students."

"We make clear to all of our student-athletes that they represent Princeton University at all times, on and off the playing surface and in and out of season, and we expect appropriate, respectful conduct from them at all times," Samaan said. "The behavior that we have learned about is simply unacceptable. It is antithetical to the values of our athletic program and of the University, and will not be tolerated.

"After reviewing the situation with Coach Orr, we have decided to suspend the season, and all associated team activities, effective immediately," Samaan added. "In the coming days we will make a determination about the status of the team’s remaining schedule and we also will work collaboratively to determine additional actions aimed at education and positive culture building for the team."

“The athletics department and the University are committed to providing an inclusive environment free from harassment and intimidation and characterized by mutual respect and concern for the well-being of others,” Samaan said. “In recent years we have worked closely with Princeton’s SHARE office (Sexual Harassment/Assault Advising Resources and Education) to provide educational and training programs for our students and our staff.

Of course, Princeton isn"t the first Ivy to cancel sports seasons this year.  Columbia University recently suspended its wrestling team"s season after the discovery of "racist, misogynistic and homophobic" text messages sent by team members.

Apparently this Columbia wrestler longed for the better supply/demand characteristics of "hot girls" at "state schools" after visiting Pitt and Duquesne where "damn near every girl [he] saw was an 8."

Meanwhile, this wrestler got busted for posting a "sexist" article that he lifted from the Huffington Post.

And, of course, who can forget the Harvard men"s soccer team "scouting report" that ranked the womens team by looks and assigned each a nickname and preferred sexual position to match their position on the field.  Per the Harvard Crimson:

The author of the “report” often included sexually explicit descriptions of the women. He wrote of one woman that “she looks like the kind of girl who both likes to dominate, and likes to be dominated.”

Each woman was assigned a hypothetical sexual “position” in addition to her position on the soccer field.

“She seems relatively simple and probably inexperienced sexually, so I decided missionary would be her preferred position,” the author wrote about one woman. “Doggy style,” “The Triple Lindy,” and “cowgirl” were listed as possible positions for other women.

The author also assigned each woman a nickname, calling one woman “Gumbi” because “her gum to tooth ratio is about 1 to 1.”

"For that reason I am forced to rate her a 6,” the author added.

“She seems to be very strong, tall and manly so, I gave her a 3 because I felt bad. Not much needs to be said on this one folks,” the author wrote about another woman.

Concluding his assessment of one woman, the author wrote, “Yeah… She wants cock.”

Meanwhile, proving that Ivy Leaguers aren"t the only "vulgar, offensive, misogynistic and racists," the AP is reporting that the men"s soccer team at Washington University in St. Louis has also just been suspended for "sexually explicit comments and other inappropriate behavior toward the women"s soccer team."

At this rate, there should be no college sports team left by 2018 and asking a girl out for coffee will be universally recognized on college campuses as a hate crime.